


Among Ghosts

by AlbiNora



Series: Midnight Observations of Hollow Knight and Its Characters [2]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst and Feels, Canonical Character Death, Dehumanization, Depression, Error Home Not Found, Favoritism, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, It Gets Worse, Loss of Identity, Mentions of other characters - Freeform, Not A Fix-It, Pale Flower Trips, Post-Canon, Post-Embrace the Void Ending (Hollow Knight), Post-Radiance (Hollow Knight), Sorry Not Sorry, The Knight is Called Ghost (Hollow Knight), Unhealthy Relationships, a brief mention of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:53:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26265295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlbiNora/pseuds/AlbiNora
Summary: Self indulgent fic focusing on Ghost and their struggling with fitting into society post radiance, trying and mostly failing at it.
Series: Midnight Observations of Hollow Knight and Its Characters [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1908793
Comments: 13
Kudos: 111





	Among Ghosts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CuriouslyCheekyCheye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriouslyCheekyCheye/gifts).
  * Inspired by [How to Have a Home](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25582045) by [SkyeDragonDraws](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkyeDragonDraws/pseuds/SkyeDragonDraws). 



Ghost thought, they finally had their happy ending. When they walked out of the black egg with both of their siblings, missing some parts and exhausted, but alive, they thought this is it, it’s over. 

Quirrel was gone and Myla was gone and Cloth died for them, but they had their family back now, right? 

They thought, hoped, clung to the fact that maybe it was okay to rest now, to be and to be happy. 

Oh, but why did they feel like an intruder in a house that they helped choose? In a village where they knew everyone, helped everyone? Why did they feel that all that wanted them was the dreamnail and all that it contained? 

Why was it that only those they put to rest with the object spoke to them, comforted them, cared for them? Why that only the remnants of the past told them that what they did was needed for Hallownest? And why did they feel closer to the ones they killed, murdered, slain with cold blood, than the ones who they shared blood with? 

As they watched from the corner of their eye, once again in that house that was warm but not the kind that made them relaxed but the one that made them feel all too small in their shell yearning for the dark and cold of the abyss, their only sister who attacked them twice and barely spared them a word, so gentle and nice and bubbly with their sibling (who left them behind to fall, fall and fall and crack until they had to pick up their own pieces) who spoke less, moved less, loved less than they did, they felt envious and sad and nothing nice. 

What did their half-sister see in the one who betrayed the abyss, their siblings and their own twin, that she was so soft with them that Ghost thought they would break their own twin (who could still break them with one arm rotten, their vision halved and their wounds filled with nothing but infection) if they so much as thought of them wrong? 

Why was it, that it took them this long, several weeks of time to realize, for Ghost to see, that they were nothing more than their namesake? Just regrets left behind by someone that should have passed a long time ago. Something that was causing nothing but misery and pain… 

Elderbug was busy with the bugs who came to Dirtmouth now, always talking, always helping, their flower nowhere to be seen, maybe left inside his house or crushed from a careless movement. 

Iselda and Cornifer were thriving among the people, their business flourishing as the two sold maps and helped find houses, venturing down the well with Iselda as their nail against anything that could attack, not that there were many left. 

Sly was getting all the geo even if his supply was getting short, always having enough for the ones who came. He seemed more cheerful, if only slightly, less gloom on his shoulders, no longer as lonely as he used to be. 

Bretta was gone, Ghost didn’t blame her. 

Zote was... around. He talked to many then talked to few. He went down the well and then came back up, sometimes when many were sleeping Ghost could see him, almost patrolling, but not quite. Searching for something that couldn’t be found. Ghost couldn’t tell what they felt about them, but on some days, they were almost tempted to join the other bug. 

Hornet cooked, sometimes, even if it was unnecessary, the vessels didn’t need cooked sustenance and she was beast enough to like it better raw. 

She taught Hollow how to cook, tried to teach them to sew, to read, to write, to breathe on their own. Talking to their younger sibling almost constantly now, Ghost couldn’t remember the last time she spared them any of her words. That's a lie though, Ghost thought, easily recalling trying to motivate Hollow to live, to move to cry or do all the things they could now, unlike them, only to be shut down by Hornet for disturbing the ‘older’ vessel, shouting and oh so angry. 

How foolish to say that, didn’t she know that Ghost was the oldest one alive, that they were older than her? Hollow was one of the youngest, the youngest one alive for sure. Did she care? Would she care if Ghost told her or would she call them a liar and to stop? They didn’t want to know. 

On days when Ghost couldn’t sit in a house that only they didn’t call a home, they left. To wander to visit, planting fragile flowers by the graves of their siblings, in Spirits’ Glade, the Seer’s resting place. They took some to the graveyard in Dirtmouth, then down to Cloth and to the carcass of the fierce knight, they avoided their mother that never stopped calling them an object, they didn’t want to hear. 

They visited the mines, sitting by the statue that remained of the Radiance, eventually planting flowers around as well. Ghost couldn’t understand at first, why she would do what she had done, but didn’t Ghost do the same, only for a sibling that didn’t even care for them? The thought brought them assurance on some days and self-loathing on the rest. 

Eventually, they took flowers to Quirrel’s resting place, sitting for a long while and staring, thinking. They took one look at the depths of the water that may be able to kill them for good, immediately fleeing like they were chased after, hating the thought with vengeance. 

Sometime after, they left flowers for Lurien and Monomon, visited Midwife with plenty of food and gave her a flower, hoping that she would appreciate the gesture (she did, but they didn’t dare to take much longer than that), taking another to Herrah’s resting place, never truly intending to return after that (they never did, knowing that if not hated, Hornet definitely disliked the idea of them being near there). 

They weren’t there when Hollow got their name, Purl, they just noticed that Hornet started calling them as such one day. Ghost thought it might be through the weaving of sorts they were doing now, they didn’t ask, couldn’t, choose not to when Hornet didn’t even spare them a single glance. 

When their sibling bolted from their sleep, full of terror and panic, ready to lash out at anyone, they still stuck close to them, comforted them to the best of their ability, they still by their side even as their shell was scratched by Purl, sat still as Hornet calmed them fully, left when she shooed them away. 

When Grimmchild started to prefer their sibling’s company over their own, they gifted Purl with their charm, they never felt more like crying then when they saw that the child didn’t even seem to particularly care about it. If they had a heart, they were sure it would have broken. It was that they that Grimm’s words came back to haunt their mind, when the nightmare’s vessel called them alike to their father, the thought never went away after that. 

They started spending less and less time there, in the house where only a pair of siblings lived, mostly visiting if it could be called that. 

One day they went to visit Mato. They were happy that the man was happy for their presence, maybe the man would treat them like family? He called them his child, but would he give them a home as well? 

Hope blooms, then blossoms and finally it dies. Maybe if they had a home, they wouldn’t have been so crushed when Mato encouraged them to head home, maybe they would have told him that they don’t have one, if they didn’t feel as empty at the words that were said. They just nodded, and left. 

They truly were, nothing more than a ghost, were they? How fitting a name their sister has chosen, perhaps the only place they can call their own would be there among the other ghosts, mistakes and follies and nothing more. They thought about the resting grounds, for a mere second, then decided that their father has disturbed that place enough, they would not do the same. 

Ghost went, not even saying goodbye, unnoticed by everyone as they walked to the city of tears, with water beating down upon them, soaking them to their core. 

As they entered the Sanctum and found none of its ghosts attacking them? They never felt more at home. It was just them, the silence of the dead halls and the rain falling, always falling outside, that cried instead of them, for them, with them. 

It was easy to settle into a routine, to roam the halls of almost dark enough walls. They could gather all the soul they needed to live with ease, there were enough ghosts around to keep them around for millennia after all. 

They weren’t sure why, but they waited. For hours upon hours, that melted into days and then weeks and months, but nobody ever came. Even when the city started to live again, with bugs bustling and rebuilding and living. No one searched for them. Years have passed them by as they hoped for someone to show, to search for them, but no bug ever came… 

Black mist started to coat the halls, it was all them, their cloak-like wings turning wispy like clouds, but black instead of gold and yellow and bright. They didn’t hold it back, merely inside to fill up the halls, to gather around them, to coil. It was them, their essence their form, they started to lose their focus. 

They had dreams now, were the dreams now, something of that sort. Their mist was cool and nothing like the Radiance, they wondered if she were still around if she would burn them away if they asked, if she could do so at all. 

Some days, or weeks they could no longer tell, they did nothing else but listed to the dreamnail sing. Marissa carrying on with her song, No Eyes (they wanted to cry when she said she could no longer remember her name and called her Hymn after) sometimes humming. Others sometimes talked, and Ghost answered when they could. 

The more they talked with their ghosts, the more their mist had lines of gold and purple in them, memories and thoughts and presence. They felt more and less at the same time, no longer patrolled the halls, but the thoughts of bugs outside. One day, they realized that the sanctum no longer had the ghosts that they met during their first time there, instead they looked like normal bugs, faded and dazed and more mist than anything, but there and formed proper. 

Even once they have grown (Where was their head, where were their horns? Did they lose them?), not as tall as Purl, never as tall with how many moults they forced away by sheer will, they still haven’t seen their sister or anyone really, searching for them. 

No one looked, no one tried. 

People thought them gone, so they were, eventually becoming something more than void but less then dreams. 

Sleep. 

They called to those who wandered too close to the Sanctum. 

Sleep and never wake. 

They started to lose their focus, no longer Ghost, no longer them, no longer theirs. Slowly, through oh so many lonely years they became us and ours and ghosts. 

For you have never searched for us, 

Mist and fog without the focus, without the will to stay together as one. 

Never welcomed us, 

The ghosts stirred when they saw dark red and heat and flame. 

Never gave us home or hope or love. 

“They have left you in quite the sorry state, haven’t they?” 

But we love you, even if it hurts and tears at us. Even if we lose what remains of us…? 

“Do not worry, I do not blame you for my sister’s passing, her reign had to be ended.” 

We were called Ghost, and now we aren’t, but we won’t fade, we can’t. 

“You took her place, and that makes you a sibling of mine.” 

They didn’t want to, didn’t need to hope. 

“I left her alone to suffer, to fall. But I won’t repeat my mistakes again.” 

Not anymore. 

“Not anymore.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Burying a Nail and a Needle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28391829) by [hydrangeamaiden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrangeamaiden/pseuds/hydrangeamaiden)




End file.
